Marilyn Pappano - Lawman's Redemption

It seemed the picture-taking took longer than the ceremony had, but finally they were finished. He was wondering what kind of luck he would have slipping out the door and heading home when Reese clapped him on the back. “Don’t even think about it.”

“About what?” Brady asked, keeping his expression bland.

“Going home. Not before Neely gets a dance with you.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Brady lied.

“Yeah, right. I know being social isn’t your favorite thing. You’d rather be home alone watching TV with a pizza and a beer.”

Brady shrugged, then quietly said, “Well, you did it.”

Reese glanced at Neely, coming their way, and smiled a satisfied smile. “Yeah. I did. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be next.”

“No, thanks. Been there, done that.”

And had the scars to prove it.

When Neely had told her they were having their reception outside, Hallie envisioned a setting similar to the parties she’d held back home in Beverly Hills—the pool sparkling in the night, the lush gardens perfuming the air, acres of emerald-green grass and uniformed servers attentive to the guests’ every need.

The scene surrounding her was quite different. They were in a park that was basically one square block with a pavilion in the center. Lights had been strung from tree to tree and around the canopies circling the pavilion, and a band had set up on a stage nearby. The grass was parched from Oklahoma’s typical hot summer with too little rain, and the only servers were keeping the occasional fly away from the cake and the small hands out of the grown-ups’ punch.

But this party had something hers never had—a sense of joy. Real affection and friendship. A warm sense of home.

Her sister had landed herself in the midst of some very nice people. Hallie had gotten introductions to plenty of them after the cake was cut, and she thought she’d kept them pretty straight in her mind. Over the next few weeks she would have a chance to find out.

After taking a bottled water from a tub of ice near the punch table, she found a place to lean against the massive trunk of an oak tree and watched the dancing in the pavilion. A couple of friendly young men had asked her to dance, but she’d politely refused. Kylie and Bailey weren’t refusing any offers. They hadn’t missed one tune in the past half hour. They had each danced once with Brady Marshall, and so had Neely.

When Hallie had peeked around the hallway before the ceremony started and spotted him standing with Reese and his family, she had practically swallowed her tongue. She’d tried to sound casual and merely curious when she’d returned to the classroom they were using for a dressing room and asked Neely about him, but with her face flushed and her voice breathy like Kylie’s, she wasn’t sure she’d pulled it off.

Neely hadn’t told her much—just his name, that he would be the acting sheriff while she and Reese were gone and that he was a good friend. At the time Hallie had thought she was too distracted to say much else. Now she knew her sister had been saving the good stuff for Kylie.

Frankly, Hallie couldn’t see him with Kylie.

Not that she cared. She’d sworn off men for the rest of her life, except for occasional flings. She was never getting serious, never getting married and for darn sure never getting divorced again. She couldn’t survive it. And since love came with no guarantees, she wasn’t giving it another try.

Though it seemed that Neely had gotten her guarantee. The way Reese looked at her—as if she were the most important person in his life, as if he were the luckiest guy in the world to have her—was enough to make Hallie’s heart hurt. Had any man ever looked at her like that? No, not even the three she’d married.

And they’d divorced her. One because she refused to use the drugs he couldn’t live without, one because she was a drag, and Max because she wasn’t young enough. For heaven’s sake, she’d just turned thirty the very day he’d told her that!

She was certainly being a drag tonight. She was happy for Neely, truly she was, but there was a part of her that just wanted to go back to her motel and hide.

“You having a good time, baby?”

The voice was her mother’s, and Hallie had only a moment to paste on a bright smile before facing her. “Yes, Mama, I am. How about you?”

“I couldn’t be happier. Neely finally married.” Doris Irene smiled. “We’ve come to expect weddings from you, but I’d just about given up hope Neely would ever settle down.”

The muscles in Hallie’s jaw clenched. Her mother didn’t mean anything by her remark, just as Neely’s comment at the church—You’ll get over it. You always do—hadn’t been meant to hurt, but that did nothing to ease the ache in her chest. She’d always been the Madison family screwup, the one who could never do anything right. Her family joked about it and treated her failures lightly, and she smiled when they did and played along, but failing again hurt. She’d loved Max Parker with all her heart, and she’d believed he loved her, too…right up to the time she found him celebrating her birthday with the star of his most recent movie. He’d broken her heart, but because he hadn’t been the first—or even the second—her family assumed it was no big deal.

“Well,” she began when she was sure her voice would be steady, “she’s settled now. She and Reese are very happy together.”

“They sure do look it.” Doris Irene grinned slyly. “Maybe you can take some pointers from them.” Then she leaned over and kissed Hallie’s cheek. “I think I’ll go find William and see if I can get him to dance with me. I haven’t kicked up my heels in far too long. See you, baby.”

Though she tried her best not to swear, once her mother was out of sight, Hallie muttered, “Damn, damn, damn.”

“Careful there.” The words were delivered in a low, throaty, lazy drawl from behind her. “Oklahoma’s got a law on the books against swearing in public. I’d hate to have to take you away from Neely and Reese’s party in handcuffs.”

She turned to find Brady Marshall leaning one shoulder against her tree trunk. Like the other groomsmen, he’d changed out of his tuxedo, and he looked even better in his jeans and a black shirt than he had in the bar the other night. When she’d seen him sitting there alone, she’d been speechless for a moment. He was quite possibly the most handsome man she’d ever seen. He stood six-four, was lean and hard-muscled, and everything about him that night, like tonight, had been dark—from his hair and skin to his shirt, jeans and cowboy hat, to the aura surrounding him. He’d been the epitome of tall, dark and handsome…to say nothing of dangerous.

She’d spent ten minutes at the bar, watching him, speculating about him. Why was he there, and why was he alone? Was there a Mrs. Tall, Dark and Handsome, and if so, why did she let him out of the house without her protection? Finally she’d found the courage to take him a bottle of beer, and she’d seen that not everything about him was dark. His eyes were as blue as the clearest spring sky.

He’d looked incapable of smiling, of any tender emotions at all, but later, at the motel, he’d touched her tenderly. He’d made her feel…. She tilted her head to one side, considering that sentence. No, there wasn’t anything missing. That was all she wanted to say. He’d made her feel.

Shaking off the memories, she forced her attention back to his remark. “You’re kidding, right?”

Under the neat black mustache his finely shaped mouth was unsmiling, but there was something she thought might be humor in his voice. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly hate it, but I don’t think seeing me arrest their bridesmaid is exactly the sort of memory Neely and Reese want to take away tonight.”

She made a face. “I meant about the law.”

“No, ma’am, I don’t kid about such things. It’s punishable by thirty days in jail and a fine of up to $500.” After a moment, he gestured toward the dance floor. “Why aren’t you out there with your sisters?”

“I’d rather enjoy it from back here.”

“You don’t look like you’re enjoying it much.”

Drat him. Her sisters and her mother hadn’t noticed that she was putting on an act. How had this man who didn’t know her at all guessed it? But rather than try to find a response, she turned the subject back on him. “Why aren’t you out there?”

“I ran out of Madison sisters to dance with.”

She lowered her gaze to hide the fact that she would enjoy dancing with him. She already knew, both from watching him with her sisters and from the hours she’d spent with him, that his movements were graceful, sensual and powerfully controlled. She would very much like to feel his arms around her one more time, to let the heat radiating from his body warm her, to close her eyes and breathe deeply of his purely male scent and sway slowly in time to the music.

Sure, and when the dance was over and he walked away from her, what would she want then? How would she feel?

She was tired of men walking away from her, tired of never being enough for them.

“I take it you’re not fond of weddings,” Brady remarked.

“Or too fond of them, according to my family.”

“They’ve come to expect weddings from you?”

Realizing he’d overheard her conversation with her mother, she managed a quavery, embarrassed smile. “We weren’t properly introduced, were we?” She stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Hallie Madison, Neely’s younger sister and three-time loser at the game of marriage.”

She’d meant it as a bad joke, but before she could withdraw her hand, he’d taken it, enveloping it in his. His hands had fascinated her Thursday night—large, powerful, his fingers long and narrow, capable of calming a small child, controlling a grown man or arousing a needy woman. She had wondered if his palms were callused, his caresses rough, and decided they were, then he’d proved it in her room. His touch had been enough to make a lonely woman weep.

“Three times, huh?” he murmured, still holding her hand.

“At least you kept trying. I gave up after the first one.”

A flicker of something shadowed his eyes after he’d spoken. Surprise? Uneasiness? Did he know he’d told her more than the simple fact that he’d been married and divorced—that now she knew he must have been brokenhearted over the end of his marriage? With the shortage of marriageable men, it was a fact of life that men as handsome as he, as amazingly sexy as he, didn’t remain single long, not unless the scars from their failed relationships ran too deep to heal.

“You learned from your mistake. I didn’t.” Though she would be perfectly content to stand there all night with her hand in his, she caught the looks that said people were starting to notice. Gently she tugged, and after a moment’s hesitation, he let go. “What did you think of Kylie?”

“Truthfully?” He waited for her nod before he went on.

“She’s not my type.”

“Nope, sorry, wrong answer. If Neely thinks you two are right for each other, then you are. She’s never wrong.”

Ignoring her disagreement, he pushed away from the tree. “Come and dance with me.”

A shiver skittered through Hallie, making her face warm, her palms damp and her hands unsteady. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“I think it’s an excellent idea.” He pulled the bottle of water from her hand and set it on a nearby table, then clasped her hand in his and started for the pavilion.

The music was slow and romantic, and the lights cast flickering shadows back and forth as they swayed in the breeze. For one fearful moment, she wished she could break free and run off into the night. He was too tempting. She was too emotionally fragile. Neely honestly wasn’t ever wrong.